


Piece of Cake

by rubification



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cafe AU, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 04:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18542581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubification/pseuds/rubification
Summary: Shinohara Kouta is promised a chance to own a new cake shop, but only if he helps out at his boss’ friend’s cafe for six months. Douzaki Kakeru is left grudgingly in charge of his father’s cafe after said father falls terribly sick. Business is close to non-existent, Kakeru can’t be bothered to give a fuck about the cafe other than actually brewing decent coffee, and Kouta has Issues. But sometimes things can be a piece of cake if you let them be.





	1. where the smell of yakisoba lingers

**Author's Note:**

> Hika’s cafe AU slice of life that she started in November 2017 as a challenge for Nanowrimo that she surprisingly found herself enjoying. She has also never written slice of life before.

###  **Chapter 1: where the smell of yakisoba lingers**

The shopping district was quiet and empty, save for a few old women with their shopping baskets; Kouta was starting to regret his decision and doubt his conviction within the first few minutes he set foot in it. There were trendy and hipster shopping districts, and then there were old people shopping districts, and this was definitely the latter.

Would people even bother to visit a cafe in this place? He wrinkles his nose, walking past fruit and vegetable stalls and a bookstore that looks like it came out of his history textbooks.

His luggage wheels clatter noisily across the uneven asphalt, and he looks back down at his smartphone to check once more if this is the right place, half hoping that google was doing that weird thing where it brought you to a weird place that was two blocks away from your actual destination. Before google maps can reload, he realises that the address painted on the nearby lamppost is exactly the address his mentor had provided him with, and he curses and looks up at the shop front in front of him.

It looks considerably better than the rest of the neighboring shops, he supposes. To some people it probably looked nostalgic and fancy in the way musty antique shops were. It didn’t impress him as much though, and he double checks the wooden signboard hanging by the brick wall once more.

_Cafe Douzaki_ , it reads, as if mocking his futile attempts to escape from reality, and Kouta reaches for the doorknob, taking a moment to steel his nerves once more.

Well, it’s an outdated cafe in a outdated shopping district, but it _was_ a weekday, off peak hours, and perhaps business was better when the students came back from school and the office workers headed home. There were a few small bars and izakaya peppering the street as well, which means that at least there would be _some_ semblance of a night life.

And besides, the more challenging it would be to get the cafe business to prosper, the more he could sell his contributions to it as a part of his portfolio.

With renewed determination, he pushes open the door, inhaling deeply—

— and as the smell of yakisoba hits his face, Kouta feels the rest of his resolve crumble.

“Why the hell is there _yakisoba_?!” He exclaims, to no one in particular, mostly just out of exasperation. The greasy smell hovers ominously over the faint smell of coffee, and Kouta feels a little sick.

“... cuz it’s the only thing I know how to cook.” A voice answers him, and he snaps his head over to the counter, where a young man is standing, face scrunched up as if Kouta was the thing that smelt bad. “The customers asked for some food, so.” He shrugs, before adding, as if it was an afterthought — it probably was — “Welcome to Cafe Douzaki, how can I help you.”

Kouta feels everything but welcome at the deadpan recital of memorized dialogue. The man looks equally deadpan as well, with a side of just-this-close to-just-looking-pissed-off. Customer service: 0, Kouta scores in the back of his head, and tries to be hopeful. “Are you the part timer?”

The man makes a face. “Kinda.”

“Where’s the owner?”

“Dying in the Hospital.” Came the reply, and Kouta is very certain “pissed” was starting to show through the (never well constructed in the first place) facade of the man in front of him.

“... I heard his son was taking over in his absence,” Kouta tries again, as politely as he can. He can tell the other party doesn’t want to make conversation, but he will squeeze it out of him if he needs to. This was a new job he couldn’t afford to screw up.

The man snorts. “I didn’t know I could still be counted as that.”

“ _You’re_ his son?!” Kouta gives up on being polite. Screw polite. “You just said you were a part timer!”

“I’m standing in until he comes back, how does that make me not a part timer?!” The man snaps back, blank mask now replaced by annoyance, and Kouta wonders if it’s right to think that this was more fitting on him. He had a face built for scowling; the way his eyebrows scrunch up and his lips curl back in a snarl look very convincing. Kouta wonders if the Douzaki family had ties with the yakuza or something.

Basically, he was regretting his decision ten times more right now, and Kouta didn’t think it was even possible to do that a few minutes ago.

Must be the yakisoba, he sniffles, and puts on his most forgiving smile. “No, that makes you the stand-in master, and my direct superior for the next few months.”

Silence.

Kouta straightens his back a little more, and tries, very hard, to not walk out of the door.

“Uh… what?”

“... I’m your new patisserie. You received the notice right?”

”... no?”

Kouta wants to walk out, right now, but he tries, very hard, to stand his ground. _Come on, Nobuaki, you promised me this, please tell me you weren’t sloppy enough to not inform the guy in charge._ He thinks about his mentor, who has the capacity to do things with the sole purpose of screwing with him, but realizes he trusts him enough to know that he wouldn’t go this far to sabotage Kouta’s future and career.

“... are you sure?” Kouta asks, fingers tightening around the handle of his luggage. _Please, god, I even brought clothes and toiletries and it’s going to be really embarrassing to admit that I didn’t even book a hotel to stay the night._

The man grumbles something incoherent, and has the decency to pull out his smartphone, probably in an attempt to search for some important message he missed. His eyes widen shortly after — Kouta feels a small wave of relief wash over him — and he turns away from Kouta, walking into the kitchen whilst holding his phone to his ears, the heel of his foot tapping impatiently against the wooden flooring of the counter area.

“Sis? What the fuck? I didn’t hear anything abo— don’t tell me you sent me a message you know I don’t fucking check my inbox! Why the hell didn’t you call— you _what_ ?! No, what, why should I even— it’s been settled? I don’t give a fuck— he’s _what?!_ Where the hell is he going to sleep, in the kitchen? Your room is— seriously?” A pause. “Seriously.”

Kouta waits, patiently, trying to ignore the smell of yakisoba in the air. At least the man sounded like he was this close to giving in, and even if he didn’t, Kouta was ready to bet that he’d at least have a place to spend the night.

He hears the long, defeated sigh shortly after, and decides that his death was probably postponed. Maybe to tomorrow.

“Alright alright. No I get it, I just don’t— yes, yes, fine.” A click of the tongue, and the man is back at the counter, squinting at Kouta as if he expects him to explode on the spot in around ten seconds. “... I’ll show you your room.” He turns away, not bothering to wait as he unlocks the wooden door behind the counter, and Kouta hurriedly tries to jam his luggage through the small gap between wall and countertop and later door.

The wooden staircase up to the second floor is narrow and cramped and unexpectedly steep, and Kouta tries not to curse as his luggage clumsily knocks against step after step and his pinky and his knee.

The man is standing in front of a room with his arms crossed. “My sis said she cleaned up the room before she left, but if you need to you can move stuff around to make space.” He nudges at the room with his shoulder. “Just… don’t throw anything out. I’ll be downstairs.”

Kouta nods, trying not to look too exhausted just from climbing a flight of stairs, and drags his luggage into the room. The man didn’t say anything about chasing him out after one night, so he assumes that the one phone call cleared up the misunderstanding and he is indeed here to stay for the initial agreement of 6 months.

The room is small but clean, the closets empty, save for a few sets of clothing, which he takes off the hangers and folds up nicely to place in the cabinet instead. The bed is a simple mattress on a raised wooden frame, but it’s not too bad. He sits down on it gingerly, wondering if it can handle his weight. It creaks, but seems sturdy enough. He opens the window to let in some fresh spring air. His gaze drifts to his luggage, and after a few seconds, decides that unpacking can wait.

He had other pressing concerns, after all. Half of his luggage is the black bag that contains most of his tools, but there were things he couldn’t bring along. He walks back downstairs, the various utensils in his bag clinking against each other.

“So uh, do you have an oven?”

The man returns his question with an empty stare.

_Oh god._

“Uh…” The man furrows his eyebrows, “like the… thing you bake bread in?”

“Yes,” _Patience,_ Kouta prompts himself. “The big box that heats up and lets you bake bread in it. Bread and, you know, pastries, cakes.” The man’s blank expression is gradually closing in to a scowl, and so Kouta adds, helpfully, “I’m a patisserie you see. I bake stuff.”

The man kicks himself off the chair he was sitting on (loudly) and heads into the kitchen. Kouta takes his lack of a reply as an invitation to follow.

The kitchen smells — not surprisingly— of yakisoba, and Kouta tries not to make a face at the lack of… everything in general. He was used to working in his mentor’s shop, back in Tokyo, where everything was… updated. He wasn’t expecting state of the art technology and equipment, but he had — stupidly, he decided — expected a little more than _this._

The man knocks his fist on a comparatively large black box. “You mean this?”

It’s a household oven, thankfully not too small, thankfully with knobs to control the temperature, and — Kouta has to squint slightly to check — a few different modes for baking. It also looks very, very, unused.

“Uhm. I guess.” He bends forward to scrutinize the oven, wondering if the temperature was going to be accurate, if the heat was going to be evenly distributed. He tries a knob, and frowns when no light comes on.

“It’s broken,” the man says, and Kouta nearly knocks his forehead against the door of the oven.

“ _It’s what?!_ How am I supposed to do any work then!?”

“Relax,” the man says, and Kouta wants to grab him by the shoulders to shake him because he could make compromises with crappy equipment but _he couldn’t bake without an oven_. “I’ll get it fixed before tomorrow.”

“You… you’ll what?” Kouta narrows his eyes suspiciously at the man who was supposed to be his boss for the next half a year, and wondered if this was what it felt to have a complete lack of faith in the upper management. He throws a glance at his watch — four thirty in the afternoon; was he going to try to get some repairman to come down at this time? Kouta thought that things closed early in the countryside.

“I’ll get it fixed by tomorrow,” he repeats, rolling up his sleeves and throwing Kouta a look over his shoulders as he bends over to pull out what looks like a toolbox from under one of the kitchen countertops.

Kouta watches, a little dumbfounded at what this implied, and gets shoved aside by a ungracious shoulder.

“God, you’re in the way. Get out and… I dunno, don’t you need to… get whatever ingredients or something?”

“Eh.”

“The supermarket will be open till night but if you want special flour or whatnot, I think they close in…” He looks at his watch, “thirty minutes.”

Kouta dashes out of the kitchen.

“Turn the sign to closed for me!” The man calls from the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

Kouta returns with an arm full of flour and sugar and eggs and butter and fresh fruits. He would probably have to officially start getting contacts for specific raw ingredients soon, but for now he thinks he’ll have to try to bake with limited resources for a while. He could cut down his usual repertoire, he thinks to himself as he nudged the door open with a shoulder. After all anything would probably seem fancy enough for a cafe that serves yakisoba on its menu.

He’d have to try to talk his boss out of serving that at all. Take it out of the menu. He can probably put together some sandwiches without much thought if the customers really demanded to have meals with their coffee.

“Uhm, I’m back.” He slides into the kitchen from behind the counter, to what looks like some excavation site laid out on the kitchen table top. “... how’s it going.”

His boss shoots him a look that says “what do you think”, screwdriver in his mouth, in the middle of either taking the back panel out or putting it back.

“Sorry.” Kouta apologizes, and watches as he returns back to work. “So uh, you know how to fix stuff?”

There’s a long pause, before the man slides the back panel out and takes the screwdriver out of his mouth. “Worked as a mechanic before.”

“Ah. Okay.” Kouta opens the fridge, which is thankfully empty, and proceeds to empty the egg carton into it. “... you should take the yakisoba out of the menu,” he suggests, a little gingerly.

“Haah? Why?”

“It… it’s just wrong.” Kouta makes a face, not understanding why he has to even explain something like this. “And it kinda ruins the smell of the coffee. You’re supposed to be a comparatively traditional cafe right?”

The man shrugs. “Sure. Less for me to do.”

Kouta thinks a little, about how the man claimed he was a part timer. “You’re really not very into working here huh.”

“Yeah.”

Kouta feels like he understands. He didn’t really want to come to some small cafe in some small shopping district far out from the city either. But he had a goal, at least. He was going to make the cafe a success, and someone who couldn’t be assed to do a proper job was an obstacle.

“Douzaki was it?” He doesn’t bother to add in honorifics; partly because he doesn’t think the person in question cared for those, partly because he doesn’t see much reason to be polite to an obstacle in his way. “How do you brew your coffee?”

The man pauses in the middle of fiddling with the wiring. “What type of stupid question is that?”

Kouta considers his options. He could approach this like a salesman, charming and charismatic and smooth talking, bullshit his way through the conversation. Or he could go straight to the point.

A strange feeling in his gut told him that perhaps rude was the way to go here.

“Well I was just wondering if you… knew your stuff you know? I mean you were serving yakisoba in a cafe and if you were a mechanic before you came here, do you even know about coffee or beans?”

He watches Douzaki carefully; the crease in his brow, the way he turns away from the oven to look at him from over his shoulders.

“... Is that a challenge?” His voice is low, threatening even. It’s a lot less outwardly growl-y like it was previously, but there’s a silent rage under the surface, and Kouta is suddenly very certain that there’s something there. Something that will taste a lot like victory.

“Nah,” he makes it a point to shrug as nonchalantly as he can, “just… concerned. I mean, my cakes are good stuff, I’m confident in being impressive enough for the customers here even with a handicap of crappy equipment.” Douzaki’s eyebrow twitches, once, and Kouta licks his lips once. _Nearly there, just a bit more_. “But that’s gonna amount to nothing if the coffee is… mediocre or amateur, right?”

Douzaki slams the screwdriver in his hands onto the kitchen counter with a resounding thud, and Kouta congratulates himself silently.

_Gotcha._

“Sit down.” Douzaki growls, “I’ll show you what coffee is supposed to be like.”

 

* * *

 

Kouta was expecting him to be decent, maybe decent enough to use fancy coffee powder with milk and cream, but he is pleasantly surprised when Douzaki begins with grinding the beans.

Kouta holds back from making a remark, considering his own very limited knowledge of coffee, deciding to shut up and watch instead as Douzaki grinds the beans and boils the water, his motions practiced and smooth as he moves from one stage to the other.

“Any issues with black?” Douzaki slides the cup of coffee in front of him, still looking like he would rather kill a person than make coffee.

“Nope.” Kouta leans back, smug, still very pleased with the results of his provocation, and inhales the scent of the coffee, which is thankfully a lot stronger than the lingering smell of yakisoba in the background now. “Blend?”

“House blend. It’s late so it’s a darker roast. Let me know if you need milk or sugar.”

“Real men take it black, huh?” Kouta jokes, “... I’ll have some milk and sugar for later then.” He takes a sip, and falls silent for a while, letting the fragrance and the full bodied flavor of the beans rest on the tip of his tongue for a while.

This was more of a victory than he expected.

It’s Douzaki’s turn to look smug this time. “So what was it about your cakes?”

“I’m impressed,” Kouta says, trying his best to _not_ sound genuinely impressed, but he feels it seep out from beneath his fake-posh tone anyway. “What are you doing as a mechanic if you can brew like this?”

“...” Douzaki shrugs, not really looking up from his clean up of the machines. “I liked messing with car engines a little more than coffee machines I guess.”

“Huh.” Kouta says, but doesn’t bother pressing any further. All that matters is that the coffee here is actually damn good, much better than he expected. He’d have to spend a bit of time tonight re-adjusting his expectations here.

“Your cakes better be good,” Douzaki warns, and Kouta cackles,

“If they’re good can I use some funds to get a better oven?”

Douzaki raises an eyebrow at him.

“What, I’m serious, your equipment is professional,” he gestures at the various machines in between the both of them, “I need good shit to do good shit too, okay?”

“... sure,” Douzaki shrugs. “But only if they’re fucking awesome.”

“Is that a challenge?” He smirks, mirroring Douzaki’s words, and Douzaki himself seems to catch the reference, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards slightly. _Faith in upper management restored_ , Kouta thinks to himself. A pretty decent achievement for the first day.

"... Shinohara Kouta.” He extends a hand over the counter. Douzaki stares at him for a moment, and Kouta wonders if the ghost of an expression he catches in that split second is relief, or amusement.

“... Douzaki Kakeru.” He takes Kouta’s hand, and the handshake is firm. “... I should get back to fixing the oven. Do you need dinner?”

“Don’t you?”

Kakeru pauses for a while, “... I was going to make yakisoba, but you have something against it don’t you?”

“Only if the smell is all over your cafe during opening hours.” Kouta waves at the cafe. “Seriously, people come in a cafe expecting to smell the fragrance of coffee beans, not grease and oil.”

“Alright alright, I get it, no yakisoba smell in the cafe from tomorrow,” he holds up both hands in surrender as he walks back into the kitchen. “I take it that you actually do want it for dinner.”

Kouta’s stomach answers, and Kakeru lets out a short bark of laughter from within the kitchen.

The yakisoba is actually pretty good, but Kouta insistently leaves the cafe doors open to air the smell out after dinner.

 


	2. strawberries and the prince of cakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kouta comes up with a successful marketing campaign involving mostly his face, and Kakeru finds out that he likes strawberry shortcake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to ask my friend who has worked in a cafe before about things because up till this point in the story I still thought corkboards were a legit way to keep track of orders.

###  **Chapter 2: strawberries and the prince of cakes**

 

“Nobody’s coming huh,” Kouta says, his face pressed against the countertop, his feet kicking idly in the air, knocking against the counter every once in awhile, and Kakeru clicks his tongue in annoyance.

“What were you expecting?” He doesn’t bother to look up from the glass display shelf he’s trying to fix. Kouta had dragged him out of bed at 5 in the morning, whining about how the glass display for cakes wasn’t working. Kakeru spent the next 3 hours or so trying to figure out why there isn’t cold air coming out, whilst Kouta grudgingly compromises with putting his cakes in the fridge. 

“I dunno…” Kouta replies, “You made good coffee so I thought there was some hope… Don’t you have like, I dunno, long-time regular customers or something? You’d think that some businessmen will at least drop by for their morning coffee.” He glances at his watch. “How the hell is this place even surviving?”

Kakeru shrugs, “I guess the old man wasn’t really about making much profit. It’s like some side thing to keep him from being too bored.”

“... how long since he’s been, uh, sick?” Kouta doesn’t seem to know much about the details. Maka told him over the phone that Kouta’s mentor had explained the gist of the situation to him, but glossed over the details. 

“Just in case you get triggered by something, Kakeru,” his older sister had chirped happily to him over the phone yesterday, and Kakeru wanted to hit his head against a hard surface to stop it from aching. He had no idea why she didn’t think he’d be triggered by some random stranger dropping by announcing that he was employed without Kakeru’s knowledge.

“He collapsed sometime two weeks ago, mom brought him to the hospital. Needs some operation or whatnot so I dunno how long it’d be till he’s discharged.”

“... so he’s not dying.” Kouta shoots him a look. 

“Everyone’s gonna die eventually,” Kakeru shrugs, fiddling with the wiring. He can hear Kouta’s disapproving look, but makes a point to ignore him. A bit more fiddling, and he hears the cooling system whir to a start. Aha.

“Ooh is it working?” Kouta sticks his head over the counter excitedly. Kakeru leans back to check. Lights, working. He waves a hand inside the glass cabinet. Cool air, blowing.

“I think so. Gotta clean it out a little though.”

“I’ll get down to it.” Kouta hops off the chair he’s been sitting on, and hurries into the kitchen. 

Kakeru watches Kouta run past him, his hands suddenly very empty and very much at a loss on what to do. He is still not very used to this, but in his defense it’s only been a day, and a day is barely enough for him to get used to having someone around, let alone deal with the irregular behavior patterns this one Shinohara Kouta exhibited. 

Kouta looks like the epitome of a flaky guy; all talk, all good looks, not much else. At least, that was Kakeru’s initial, few-hours-long impression of him. He had his doubts about his level of professionalism, about how serious he was about working in the cafe at all. But each time it comes to work, Kouta surprises Kakeru at least once.  _ Good _ , Kakeru thinks to himself, because a person he can respect for having passion in their work was going to be a lot more bearable for a duration of six months. 

Kouta is busying himself with cleaning out the glass display, frowning at weird specks of dust and figuring out if a fingerprint is on the inside or the outside. Kakeru yawns, wondering when was the last time he woke up so early, and brews himself a cup of morning coffee.

He makes a point to make an extra cup for Kouta who, by then, is already sliding his cakes into the display shelf. There’s not much of a selection, Kakeru thinks to himself, not that he knows much about cakes in the first place. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kouta says, probably intentionally smug (Kakeru doesn’t know how someone can pull off that level of annoying-smug without having full intention to sound or look like that), “you’re wondering about why there’s only this many right?”

Kakeru shrugs, sipping his coffee instead. 

“Well for one  _ your  _ oven is limited, so I’m not going to risk making any fancy things for now. Secondly, I’m going to need to source out specific suppliers for certain ingredients. Milk and butter for example, and eggs. Fruits I can make do with the selection that the fruit store has— hey, are you listening?”

Kakeru nods and makes a non-committal noise. 

Kouta makes a pouty face, which makes Kakeru grimace. The look is too cute for him. Kinda gross. “Drink your coffee. We can talk about suppliers and all that shit when we actually have legit customers buying your cakes.” 

Kouta’s shoulders droop. “I was kinda hoping you’d  _ not  _ rub salt into my open, fresh wound.” He sobs dramatically, and sips on the coffee gingerly, making a point to sniff loudly after each sip. 

“Just make do for the time being. We’re a cafe, not a cake shop.”

“Says the person who served yakisoba as a meal.” Kouta sniffs, louder this time, and Kakeru bites back the urge to throw a sharp utensil at him, settling with giving him the middle finger instead. 

Kouta snickers and changes the topic, not so subtly. “Gotta do something about the lack of customers huh.” He looks out of the window, wistfully, at the empty streets. “Has it always been like this?”

Kakeru shrugs, “It was slightly better when I left three years ago. I guess things just die down after a while.”

“People don’t even walk through here after work anymore huh. I noticed yesterday, they’d just take the side route from the station.”

“Some people still come here to buy groceries for dinner though, it’s not too bad.” Kakeru shrugs again. He hadn’t been considering making money out of this. It was just watching over the shop because his mother and sister had begged him for way too long on the phone. 

_ Come back, dad would want to see you too when he’s discharged. _

“And once in a while someone comes in for coffee.”

Kouta pauses to think for a while, tapping his fingers on the glass. 

“... we’re going to need to market this place properly.”

“Hah?”

“The coffee is good, the cakes are good… we should be looking at the people who work, and maybe the students as well. Can’t keep depending on a couple of old folks.”

“You keep saying your cakes are good,” Kakeru wrinkles his nose, “where the hell does that confidence come from?”

There’s a pause, before Kouta snorts, and walks over to the glass display. “I didn’t offer yesterday because I thought there’d be more business, but I guess I can afford to use one to convince you.” He sighs, mock defeatedly, before taking a cake out. It looks simple enough, of a normal, cake-like shape. White cream and strawberries, which Kouta places in front of him with a flourish. “If you wanted to try some you could have said so.”

“I never— don’t be too full of yourself.” Kakeru frowns, mostly at Kouta, but partly at the cake too. Kouta produces a fork out of nowhere — he got familiar with the cafe’s layout in the morning when he was up baking, probably, and seemed to know exactly where everything was kept (Kakeru wonders if he should be worried) — and places it onto the plate. 

Kakeru sniffs the cake, warily, and Kouta snorts from behind him. “I didn’t poison it, in case you were wondering.” 

It doesn’t smell like anything, other than the faint smell of cream and sugar, and Kakeru wonders if that should be the case. He doesn’t eat cake, which means that he probably can’t judge this cake properly either. He thinks that he’d at least be able to tell if the cake was terrible, and helps himself to a mouthful.

“...”

“... how is it?” Kouta asks, warily, the beginnings of a worried look on his face at Kakeru’s lack of reaction. 

“... it’s good.” Kakeru says, and helps himself to another mouthful. He doesn’t think he knew how to appreciate cake, but this was good. The sponge was light and fluffy, the cream between the layers hiding chunks of strawberries, and the cream was smooth and not too sweet, the mild sweetness of milk pairing with the slight kick of the strawberries and— 

“I don’t have the vocabulary for cakes,” Kakeru says, as sincerely as he can, “but it’s good. I can see where the confidence comes from.” He watches from under his fringe, not very willing to take his eyes off the cake at the moment, as Kouta deflates slightly and slouches over the countertop for a few seconds, before his head snaps up again,  the cocky smirk that was soon going to become characteristic of him plastered back onto his face. 

“Well. I told you so.”

“Sis said she asked a friend to send someone over, but I didn’t think they’d be very amazing to be honest.” 

“Isn’t that too honest?!” Kouta pauses, after his exclamation. “Wait…  your sis knows Nobuaki.”

“Who?”

“My mentor, the guy who sent me here. He said a friend asked for some help…”

“Uhh. I guess it’s probably my sis then.” Kakeru shrugs, wondering if he should save the strawberry on top for the last. Kouta’s face is slightly constipated. “What? Is that a problem?”

“Nah I was just… wondering if he’s been plotting anything ever since I set foot in this shopping district but…”

“Maybe he just wants to see you suffer,” Kakeru quips, deciding that the strawberry would go with the last mouthful of cake. 

“Are you admitting that you’re a part of my suffering now?”

“Yes.” He finishes the last mouthful of his cake, the strawberry on top going down shortly after. “It’s part of the test isn’t it? My sis said something like that. Is it something like on-job training?”

“Eh. How much did you hear from her?” Kouta blanches, but his eyes flicker over to the empty plate, and he doesn’t bother to hide how pleased he is. 

“Mmh? Uh, she said you have to do 6 months here for you to pass the test so that you can get your own shop or something.” Kakeru puts the fork down, largely sated. “That about right?” 

“Close enough.” Kouta shrugs. “How much do you know about Shino’s?”

“Who?” Kakeru raises an eyebrow as Kouta snorts at his reaction, muttering something like “figures” under his breath. 

“No wonder you didn’t react to my name. It’s the largest chain of bakeries in Tokyo. We specialize in cakes, but we’ve recently moved a little towards bread.”

Kakeru blinks. “... why do you need to own a shop when it sounds like your parents own the entire chain of shops.”

Kouta shrugs, nonchalantly, “it’s like a rite of passage or something yeah? Gotta get my parents to acknowledge my abilities, shit like that.”

“Huh. Well. Good luck then. Not that I’ll be doing too much to help.”

“I’ll just be doing my own thing, you’ll have to chip in if it involves you though.” Kouta swipes the plates out from in front of Kakeru, grinning, “like for example, let’s think of how to get more customers!”

“Don’t wanna. Troublesome.” Kakeru yawns, purposefully, to make sure his point is driven in. 

“... okay,  _ I’ll  _ think of how to get more customers. You let me do what I need with the cafe?”

“Sure.” Kakeru stretches, “I’ll be here, roasting some beans.”

 

* * *

 

Kouta stops him from making yakisoba for lunch, and offers to go out to buy some bentos instead. He comes back with two boxes of bento in his arms, humming happily and looking a lot more smug than usual.

Kakeru doesn’t bother to look up from his phone. 

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m in such a good mood?” 

“No?”

“No fun.” Kouta opens his bento box opposite Kakeru, and splits his chopsticks loudly. “Well, the nice lady at the bento place said she’d drop by for a coffee later.” 

Kakeru raises an eyebrow from his tonkatsu bento. “That’s it?”

Kouta does an annoying  _ tut tut tut _ with his tongue, finger movements included, and Kakeru feels his blood pressure rise just a little bit more. “You don’t understand, Douzaki. The important thing at the start is to get just one person to eat your food. It’ll spread outwards from there, especially in this day and age. Just you wait, I bet she uses Twitter.” He waves his fried prawn in Kakeru’s face, and Kakeru swipes it away with his chopsticks. 

The cafe is empty for the next two hours or so, and Kakeru idly plays games on his smartphone whilst watching Kouta out of the corner of his eye. He’s on his phone too, but looks out of the window to study the street intently every ten minutes or so. Sometimes he’s fiddling with his hair, using the window as a makeshift mirror, and Kakeru tries not to be too intrigued by that. 

At around three in the afternoon, the lady from the bento store enters. Kouta’s phone is now nowhere in sight, instead, he produces the menu from behind him in a dramatic flourish,

“Here for afternoon tea, miss?” 

“Oh, uhm,” she giggles —  _ giggles _ , Kakeru never thought the day would come when he would actually use that word on a real person — and fiddles with her hair, pulled to one side in a ponytail, “I’ve actually never really had that before…”

“Lets start with a cake then,” Kouta guides her to the display shelf, hands this close to touching her, but stopping a few inches away, as if he’s moving her with air pressure. “We don’t have too much of a selection right now since we’re just starting out, but a strawberry shortcake is quite classic, not too fancy. The strawberries are in season too, just the right amount of sweet.”

_ Oh, my god. _ Kakeru stares, as he finally realises what Kouta was doing. Kouta catches his look, and winks — the  _ bastard _ , he knew exactly what he was doing — and Kakeru rolls his eyes, going back to his smartphone game. 

“I’ll have that then.” Kakeru knows her, Yamazaki Yuka from a few blocks away. They weren’t particularly close or anything, but when you were neighbors you got to know each other whether or not you wanted to. She was a few years his senior, a plain and serious minded girl. And Kakeru didn’t think he would see the day she toyed with her hair, doe-eyed and pink in the cheeks and god,  _ giggling _ . 

“A coffee for you to go with it?” Kouta flashes the menu once more, “There are lattes if you’re not really good with the bitter taste… ah, how about a macchiato?”

She gives the okay, too busy looking at Kouta to care about the menu, and Kakeru grimaces as he moves to get the coffee. Kouta escorts her to a seat, strides over to get her cake, smooth as the cream on the goddamn strawberry shortcake. 

“What macchiato. She didn’t even say what flavour.” Kakeru hisses as him as he walks past.

“Doesn’t matter. Something sweet or cute that ladies will like.”

“What if it’s too sweet.”

“She’s not gonna care. The only thing that matters to her now is that it’s sweet and cute and something ladies like.” Kouta smiles, and Kakeru isn’t sure if he hates how Kouta knows  _ exactly  _ what is going on, or if he’s actually impressed. “Trust me.”

“Feels like cheating,” he mumbles, but starts preparing a caramel macchiato. 

“All’s fair in love and war,” Kouta mumbles back. “And cafe marketing.”

 

* * *

Their first customer of the day leaves the cafe looking like a maiden in love, and Kouta spends the next hour or so outside the cafe instead, armed with the menu. Kakeru can’t be bothered to ask him what he’s trying to do, and so he occupies himself with a brainless game in his handphone. 

The next moment when he bothers to look up again, Kouta is surrounded by a group of school girls. The door opens shortly to a group of five, who crowd around the display shelf as Kouta talks about strawberries and maccha, and how it’s all very healthy, made out of fresh ingredients, and not too fattening. 

They don’t order coffee this time, but Kouta serves them iced water with lemon slices in the glass, and stays by their table to chat with them till they leave, waving at him happily as they walk out the door.

“I’m not running a host club you know,” Kakeru says, once he’s absolutely certain they’re out of earshot. 

“I know. A host club earns more money.” Kouta snorts, bringing the empty plates over to the counter. “You gotta start small yeah? Now we cross our fingers and hope they tell their classmates or something, build up more of a customer base.” He looks at the clock. “... alright going back out. Gonna try to grab some nice OL next.”

Kakeru makes a face, “don’t get into trouble.”

“It’s okay, I’ll target the single ones. Well. As much as I can.” Kouta waves and heads back out before Kakeru can retort about how that wasn’t the problem, not at all, and the door swings shut. 

Kouta returns with two ladies in suits, who order an espresso and a latte each. They have cake, too, of course, and Kakeru watches as Kouta offers to take a photo for them but politely declines a photo with them. He brews the coffee as Kouta explains the roast and the type of beans used, and Kakeru wonders when Kouta actually memorized the menu.

“You should do it next time,” Kouta says as he places the cups on a tray. “You probably know your stuff better than me.” Kakeru makes a face in response, and Kouta laughs — charmingly, which makes it all the more annoying — before returning to his two customers. 

They leave, happily waving to Kouta, who waves back, smiling. Before leaning back against the counter and turning over to look at Kakeru,

“ _ That _ definitely went on twitter.” 

“Are you sure it’s gonna work?” 

“Dunno,” Kouta shrugs. “If it doesn’t it doesn’t, and at least we had eight customers instead of zero today yeah?”

_ Huh, _ Kakeru thinks, and doesn’t ponder too long on how he thinks Kouta has a point. “It’s just day one.” He hears himself say, “You’re not gonna last that long.”

“I’m not.” Kouta laughs. “That’s why I’m putting my all into these few days.” 

Kakeru snorts. He didn’t think he’d have such an easy time dealing with Shinohara Kouta, but then again, it was just Day One. 

“Coffee?” He asks.

 

* * *

It’s Day Five, a Saturday afternoon, and Kakeru is left a little shaken as the coffee orders come in one after another. “The Cake Prince” had apparently made it pretty big thanks to Kouta’s shameless marketing of his face over the past few days, resulting in a sharp increase in the number of female customers visiting. And of course, it hit a new high in the weekends.

Kouta preens whenever he notices Kakeru looking at him, so Kakeru has taken to looking at the coffee machines instead. 

Which is probably what he should be doing anyway, as Kouta tosses another piece of paper in his direction. It flops, helplessly, across the counter, and very nearly flies off as the door opens to yet another group of customers. Kakeru curses, slapping his hand over it, and glares at Kouta, but he’s already off, grabbing a menu and flashing his most winning smile at the two girls who immediately start tugging excitedly at each other’s sleeves as he approaches them.

The cafe probably hasn’t seen this many customers in the past five years, and Kakeru is beginning to regret not having a proper system for taking orders. Kouta has been memorizing orders and shouting at him, but by two in the afternoon the two of them have resorted to scribbling haphazardly on bits of paper that Kakeru salvaged from some old magazines and notebooks he found lying around. 

“Mocha” He places the cup on the counter, crumpling the piece of paper with the order on it (it reads ‘mca’ and Kakeru wonders how in the world he managed to decipher it -- at least, he hoped he deciphered it) and tossing it to one side before grabbing blindly for the next piece. 

Pins, he needs pins, he thinks to himself, searching the paper for something that looks like Kouta’s writing. Or something that could help him keep track of all these pieces of papers. “Hse, bl”, it reads, and Kakeru hazards a wild guess, reaching for the house blend. Kouta has, at some point, dropped by the counter to get the mocha latte, and is now chatting with the two newest customers whilst taking their orders. 

Kakeru wrinkles his nose, but goes back to measuring the beans for grinding. 

The door opens again, with a merry ring, and Kakeru kind of wants to shout “Enough!” at the top of his voice, because this is too much, screw Kouta and his successful marketing tactics. 

“I’m sorry ‘mam, we only have counter seats right now!” He hears Kouta, still cheerful, still charming, still fucking smooth, and watches in horror as two ladies happily slide into the counter seats right in front of him. 

He gives Kouta a look of what-the-fuck-do-you-even-think. Kouta winks at him, mouthing “I’ll leave them to you” before turning back to the two younger girls who are too busy staring at him to even consider the menu laid open between the two of them. 

“Do you have a menu?” The brunette asks, and Kakeru flinches, visibly, and wonders if he can just silently go back to grinding beans. He catches Kouta watching him out of the corner of his eyes, as he annoyingly draws a curve in front of his mouth. “Smile”, his mouth reads, and Kakeru wants to throw the cup of grinded beans at him. 

“... Here.” He places the menu in front of them, and it’s the best he can do, he thinks -- his natural instinct was to throw it at them, afterall. 

“Do you have a recommendation?” They look up at him, expectantly, and Kakeru just wants to go back to his coffee machine.

_ Shinohara’s effort, though. He worked so hard for this _ , his brain whispers to him traitorously. 

_ I don’t give a fuck, _ he hisses back, internally, but hears himself answer them anyway. “... The house blend is good if you like it a little more traditional. If not the mocha or a macchiato are a little sweeter and go well with the… cakes.” He throws a sideways glance at the glass display to check if there were still cakes, and thankfully there were still a few slices. 

The two ladies make impressed noises as they look at the cakes. 

“A house blend for me then. Uh, with milk and sugar…?” 

“Caramel Macchiato! I want a matcha cake to go with it.” 

“... sure, coming right up.” Kakeru hastily writes the order on a spare square of paper, before returning to his brew, pouring it into a cup. “House blend, black.” He calls out to Kouta, who comes to him and fills in two more pieces of paper. 

“Not that difficult right?” Kouta grins, and moves away before Kakeru can say anything else.

 

* * *

 

“Pins.” Kakeru mumbles under his breath, as Kouta swings the sign to “closed” before collapsing onto the counter. 

“What?” Kouta says, and he sounds like he’s dead, which is a new kind of Kouta, and thus comparatively more entertaining than usual. Kakeru would be a lot more amused if he didn’t feel equally dead. 

“Need to get those… pin things… that let us pin orders to… a board or-- or something. Like those… sliding things.” He can barely find the words he needs to communicate, but Kouta hums his understanding. 

“Stationary shop?” He suggests, “Though it looks like a really old stationary shop that might not even know what a cork board is.”

“Mmgh,” Kakeru groans. “God it’s Sunday tomorrow. It’s going to be worse, and it’s all your fault.”

Kouta laughs, but it sounds a little half-assed, considering how tired he looks. “Yay. Rucchan praised me.”

It takes Kakeru a full five seconds before he reacts properly. “Wait  _ who _ ?”

“Rucchan.” Kouta says, not bothering to lift his head from the countertop. His hand swings upwards slowly, his elbow a pivot, as his finger very lazily swings to point in Kakeru’s general direction. “Praised me.” Finger swings to himself. “Yay.”

“You’re not calling me that,” Kakeru says, still a little disbelieving that this is happening. 

“Haha. Make me.” The hand flops back onto the counter with a thud. 

Kakeru reaches over lazily to grab the ballpoint pen, still lying -- capless -- somewhere amongst the pile of used paper bits, and throws it at Kouta. It hits the side of his arm. 

“Ow.” Kouta says, after another five seconds. 

“Get up. We’re gonna get dinner.” Kakeru grumbles, dragging his feet out of the counter area, making a mental note to clean up the papers later. Kouta’s head perks upwards slightly, maybe by an inch or so,

“Yakiniku?”

“Ramen.”


End file.
